Greetings All,
I am trying to get on-line. I have just installed slackware 10.2 on
my Dell P-II notebook... I am using a Motorola SB Modem, a Netgear Wireless Router...and have a D-Link Air Plus DWL-630 wireless pcmcia
card in the Dell notebook. I used the netconfig during slackware installation with the DCHP option.
What would be my next step in getting my I-Net connection up? And
what does the term "uncomment" mean? "Thanks in advance for any help".

Randall Slack

01-23-2006 01:18 PM

first of all check if your hardware is supported on linux,
especially on a laptop you can run into problems with wireless cards where there are no official drivers for linux released, so first thing you do is look up the type and specs of your wireless hardware like you did and see on the homepage of the vendor if there are any linux drivers supported at all,
i can also recommend the HCL link (hardware compatability list) on this site, its between forums and revieuws below the penguins

if you're wireless is not supported though you might be able to use it anyway with using something like Ndiswrapper

first of all congratulations with your choice of Slackware, it was my first choice as well and eventhough its not the easiest and you will run into a lot of problems i consider it to be one "if not the best" distro to LEARN linux.

but 1 thing you need to know indeed, comment and uncomment.
in slackware you need to edit the configuration file's manually without a "controlcenter or YAST" kind of thing.
when you look in the config file's in for example /etc/ you notice that there are already a lot of options typed out for you.
when you run a programm it will read its configuration file so it it knows what to do.
every line that starts with # is being skipped and not seen by the program reading the file, so when you want to enable an already "typed out" standard option you uncomment (remove) the # at the beginning of the line.

karlox

01-23-2006 06:03 PM

once the wireless card has been recognized, wich means that is there, you could find out typing iwconfig.
then you know if it is on eth0, or eth1 ...

then you may type ifconfig eth1 up

then the wireless card is on, and working, and receiving.
if you type iwconfig again, it may tell you that there is some connection.
the essid name will turn up.
and the link quality, and many other details, like noise in db, etc...

if is nothing turning up... try typing... iwconfig eth1 essid any

and wait till you get something.
type again iwconfig to get info.
move the lap-top around, to find a good beam of frequency.

Note that this is one of the basics ways to connect to another node.
After it may require ip configuration... etc.

-=Graz=-

03-23-2006 06:16 AM

Hey StormBringer :)
You will learn a lot and have a lot of fun setting up the wireless gear i think. Unlike in windows DLINK will not offer a driver for linux for your card. I just looked their website and there is not one for the DWL-630 and linux.
You will need to do a number of things to get the card activated in linux. You may be able to choose between using native linux drivers (which can offer some cool extras) or Windows drivers (using something called NDISWrapper)..... SPend some time researching the points below and you will get there... (google and forums will help heaps)
To be quite general you will need to do the below to get it working.
1) Have PCMCIA enabled when your machine boots (slack should do a 'probing for PCMCIA' by default when booting
2) Choose whether you want to use Linux drivers or the windows/ndiswrapper
3)Find out what the 'chipset' is in the DLink card (Probably 'Prism2 or Prism54' for this card) - Use Google.
3)Install the 802.11 networking stack (unless its already setup on your machine) -
4)Install 'wireless tools' for linux (something may come with the Driver you get) - this will let you configure it once its installed)
3)Downloand and install the Driver from somewhere (may need driver and firmware) - after unpacking the files there should be a README which will offer pretty good help..

If all goes well you should be able to use the wireless tools to see/configure the card. you will then be able to use it to connect to your router etc...
It does sound like heaps but you will gain a lot of knowledge and will get to explore linux quite a bit too ;)
There will be plenty of other users who have setup this card in linux who will have posted helpers and maybe even complete guides on the forum or homepages.

You may even find the card gets auto detected and setup by it simply being inserted when you power the unit up.
like karlox said - try typing 'iwconfig' from the console window and see what happens. IWconfig is one of the wireless tools.. if it works past the outcome back into here :)

-=Graz=-

03-23-2006 07:25 AM

Hey mate - please disregard my previous post! :)

OKay i just did a bit of digging on this card for you. when you search for information about it use 'DWL-G630'.
There are multiple revisions of this card but from what i can see they have the 'Atheros' chipset onboard.
You can check what revision your card is buy having a look at the underneath of it. It will have S/N, H/W & F/W on there.
Take note of H/W (this is the revision - for example , it if says E3 then it is rev.E if it says D3 then it is rev.D)